


Dancing On My Own

by yikesola



Series: Bingo2019 [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2010, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Light Angst, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 17:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Charlie feels like shit, and she really shouldn’t be surprised by that. She’s felt like shit for a while now. Why should tonight be any different?A fic about drinks and scraps.





	Dancing On My Own

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [phandomficfests](http://phandomficfests.tumblr.com/) Bingo Fest!  
Bingo Prompt: Unrequited Love, Writer's Choice (genderswap)

Charlie feels like shit, and she really shouldn’t be surprised by that. She’s felt like shit for a while now. Why should tonight be any different? Just because she thought getting out of the house, out into the London nightlife, trying to show Phoebe a good time while she’s down for a few days, would be fun. But Phoebe would be just as happy holed up in Dani’s house over in Reading by the look of things— it was like pulling teeth to get them to both agree to come out to the club. And now they’re wasting it by sitting in a darkened corner sipping their first cocktails while Charlie’s lapped them twice! 

She hadn’t even bothered to invite Stephanie. They’d had another fight two days ago. Better to take some cooling off time. 

But Charlie isn’t cooling off at all. The club is hot and the drink coursing through her is making her blood hot, and the sight of Phoebe and Dani so sickeningly lovestruck is opening something inside of her that she doesn’t like. Something that’s gonna come out mean, she knows. She can feel it brewing. 

Another drink might help. She always thinks that, when she finishes off her third of the night. It’s halfway through the fourth that she knows she should’ve stopped but by then it’s too late to bother. 

She sits in the secluded booth across from Dani and Phoebe as long as she can bear. They hardly look at her. Phoebe tries, makes some jokes that only she will get. It’s like throwing a starving dog some bones. It’s a sign she pities her. Charlie could puke. 

When Phoebe turns back to the pretty face beside her, which looks a little too similar to Charlie’s for her to not think about what in the hell that could mean, she’s stuck replaying scraps of moments when Phoebe would look at her like that. 

She had… at some point— maybe. 

It shouldn’t matter. Stephanie was nearer, Stephanie wanted her, she wanted Stephanie. She made a choice. 

She feels her phone buzz in her pocket. She looks at Dani and Phoebe’s glasses which are half full of melted ice. She looks at her own glass and knows she could finish it in one swig if she wanted to. 

She decides she wants to. 

“Gonna grab another,” she says standing. 

“You sure?” Phoebe says, and Charlie can practically see the tally marks in her head trying to count what drink Charlie’s on by now. 

“Yeah,” she says. Phoebe doesn’t get to pity her. Phoebe doesn’t get to count her drinks. She’s got her own girlfriend to worry about, the one who sometimes tweets about how stupid she can be drunk. How the hell is she still on drink one when those tweets imply she’s just as much a fuckup as Charlie? 

While waiting for the crowd around the bar to thin, she pulls out her phone to see a text from Stephanie, and she does herself the cruel disservice of thinking it might be something sweet before opening it. “_if you come home pissed off your tits at least brush your fucking teeth before getting near me_” 

She’s not gonna bother answering. She’s allowed to get pissed off her tits all she likes— she’s got a friend in town, and life is shit. What more reason does a girl need? 

It takes ages to get another drink. She should’ve known it would. She doubts if the lovebirds have even noticed. 

Someone bumps into Charlie as she makes her way back towards where they were sitting. She realises when that posh fucking voice apologises that it was Dani. 

“We’re finally ready for round two,” she laughs. She has a loud fucking laugh. She has a loud fucking everything. Charlie’s not sure she’s shut up once since they met up that night. 

“Catch up, slowpokes,” she says then continues walking. 

It’s nice to have Phoebe alone, she realises when she sits at the booth. Even if it’s only a few minutes. That never happens anymore. She’s about to say something about the joint channel they used to post on when she sees Phoebe bring a hand to her mouth like she’s clearing her throat and Charlie knows she’s been trapped. That she only got Phoebe alone because that pity is about to be verbalised. 

“Things good?” Phoebe asks. It’s hard to hear her over the general crowd of people and loud thumping base. But she heard that familiar hesitation to be confrontational. There are so many little things about Phoebe that are familiar. 

It’s not fair. 

She’d somehow rather dump all of it out of her brain than be reminded of it in bits and pieces, as though the year that’s passed since they were so close was more like a hundred. 

“Yeah,” she nods. “You and your girl are right boring, but I forgive you.” She forces a smile. 

Phoebe looks like she’s gonna say something else, but Dani got through the line quicker than Charlie had— she really has all the fucking luck, huh— and their carefully calculated plan to corner Charlie and get her to admit what a shithole her life currently is has failed. Charlie slips out of the booth, takes a big deep drink of her cocktail only to remember when she swallows that she’d ordered a double and it burns so harshly in her throat that for the first time in a few hours she finally feels alive. 

“We gonna dance or what?” she says. Dani and Phoebe shake their heads, sipping slowly at their drinks and making stupid excuses like not wanting to lose the table. “I’ll dance on my own then,” Charlie says. 

She moves with the shitty club jams that match her heartbeat. She’s sweaty, and the people around her are sweaty, and that’s a sign that they’re all feeling. She tells herself she’s not gonna look over at the booth and does so anyway, just in time to see Phoebe lean down with a practised tilt and kiss her bloody soulmate. Charlie doesn’t notice that she’s stopped dancing, because everyone continues to dance around her. Because her heart continues to beat like crazy. Because the echo in her ear of the hollow lyrics claiming _tonight_ and _live forever_ are thankfully drowning out the usual buzzing in her brain. 

She hates the smile on Phoebe’s face when she finally pulls back. She hates that after their limited handful of eager kisses, Phoebe never smiled like that. She hates that Stephanie hasn’t smiled like that in ages. 

The ugly cracked feeling is seeping out of her bones again. She wants to stop it. When she’s thinking clearly, she knows Dani’s alright. She knows her and Phoebe work for a reason. 

But she’s not thinking clearly. 

And she’s finally cooled off, but too much. She’s gone cold. She’s gone frozen. 

Her phone buzzes again. She’s not gonna fucking look at it. 

She starts to dance again. She doesn’t want to go back to the booth, to sit so fucking near to Phoebe and feel how fucking far away she is. Another drink, maybe two, then they’ll get some greasy chips and things won’t feel so shit. Surely. She’ll brush her teeth like Stephanie asked, and do her best not to wake her. But if she does, she’ll kiss her sweetly and look for a hint of that smile she used to have. 

A hint will be enough. A scrap. Charlie’s been working with scraps all her life. 

She wants a breath of fresh air, the cool London night on her face, so she stumbles towards the door and figures Dani and Phoebe will look for her— or they won’t— and either way doesn’t really matter. 

Her phone buzzes again as she leans against the grimy brick wall of the building. This time she does look. “_at least answer so i know you’re alive_” Stephanie had sent. Then she followed up with, “_charlotte :(_” 

“_alive. pissed off my tits. will brush_” Charlie texts, slowly, intentionally. She doesn’t want typos to reveal just how drunk she is. 

Another buzz. 

“_ily_” 

Charlie stares at it for a while. It’s not quite the same as the look Phoebe gives to (she can fucking say it) her replacement. It’s not even the same as just typing out the words. But it’s nice, because she and Stephanie haven’t been very nice to each other lately. 

Scraps. 

She’ll take it. 

“_<3_” she texts back. Her phone still in her hand, she sees a text come in from Phoebe wondering where she went. She decides to take one more deep breath of London’s cool night air, polluted though it is. Then she goes back in the club.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/188028507754/dancing-on-my-own) !  
also, here’s my [song inspiration](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/188028498014/a-sad-cover-of-an-already-sad-song-that-heavily) for this fic!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Dancing On My Own](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23652136) by [yikesola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola)


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